McCain's War: Playing With Nuclear Fire

John McCain calls the conflict in Georgia "the first probably serious
crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War," and he is doing
everything he can to make it his own, even at the cost of upstaging the shrinking
President Bush. But the tragedy in Georgia also reveals the most embarrassing
foreign policy blunder since - well, since the Bush administration decided to
wage a preemptive war in Iraq. If deep thinkers in Washington insist on setting
up a string of client states to encircle Russia, they should never let the puppets
pull their own strings, as [Georgian President] Mikheil Saakashvili appears
to have done when he sent his army into rebellious South Ossetia.

Certainly, the Russian bullies were just waiting to pounce on any provocation,
but that is precisely the point. Never provoke unless you are prepared to respond,
and don't leave the decision to "the help." Every day the crisis continues,
Washington looks more foolish, huffing and puffing and mouthing demands that
no one - least of all the Russians - take as anything but Cold War rhetoric.
This could lead to dangerous miscalculations on all sides, yet no one in our
dumbed-down imperium seems likely ever to be held to account.

Who let Saakashvili off the leash? Who in the White House, Pentagon or McCain
campaign led him to believe that Washington would send in the cavalry to save
him? And how is it in our national interest to build up the local armies, navies
and air forces in Georgia, Ukraine and so many other countries along Russia's
border?

As for the Georgians, the blunder has already brought them a terrible loss
of life, limb and property, and they will almost certainly lose the breakaway
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As with Kosovo, so much for the shibboleth
of "territorial integrity." The excitable Saakashvili may also have
scared neighboring Turkey and others in NATO whose backing he would need to
join the alliance, though McCain's neoconservative backers at The Weekly Standard
are suggesting that Washington help create an Eastern European Security Alliance,
which could bring the entire region under the US nuclear umbrella.

"Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands
on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy," wrote Keir A. Lieber and Daryl
G. Press. "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy
the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike."

The authors document at length exactly how this happened. But, in brief, the
story is this: Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has greatly
augmented the strength and smarts of its nuclear arsenal, while the Russians
have let theirs decline precipitously and the Chinese have moved to modernize
theirs at a "glacial pace." I expect that America's heated verbal
response to events in Georgia will encourage both Russia and China to try to
catch up at whatever cost. But, for the foreseeable future, the Russians and
Chinese can no longer count on nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction
(MAD).

Is this good or bad? That depends on how one views American power. "Hawks,
who believe that the United States is a benevolent force in the world, will
welcome the new nuclear era because they trust that US dominance in both conventional
and nuclear weapons will help deter aggression by other countries," write
Lieber and Press. "But doves, who oppose using nuclear threats to coerce
other states and fear an emboldened and unconstrained United States, will worry.
Nuclear primacy might lure Washington into more aggressive behavior, they argue,
especially when combined with US dominance in so many other dimensions of national
power."

Though I have never much liked the labels, I fully share what the authors view
as a dovish fear, especially now that Bush and McCain have embraced the right
to wage preemptive war. I also suspect that the new nuclear reality played a
role in creating the current tragedy in Georgia. Without the testosterone of
nuclear dominance, Washington would have paid far greater heed to Russian fears
of encirclement, and might have been less reckless in encouraging a hotheaded
ultranationalist like Saakashvili.

Russia, on the other hand, has made its move in an area where America's nuclear
superiority counts far less than our current lack of conventional forces and
international legitimacy. As they have so often in the past, the Russians are
playing from weakness, not from strength, which opens the door for a fundamental
rethinking. Should the United States and its NATO allies increase military pressure
on the Russians, as now seems likely? Or, would it make more sense to work with
the Russians to demilitarize their borderlands and keep the area from becoming
a tripwire for unending confrontation with all the risk of a nuclear miscalculation?